Tuesday, October 25, 2011

12 years of difference...


First of all, part 2 of the 500 class construction saga will continue in a later post.

Last night, I took the near complete Strath Hobbies 500 class loco to my brothers layout for a bit of a show and tell, and while I was there, he produced the first 500 I built way back in 1999 (I was in year 7 at primary school) - this was a balsa body which rode on two unpowered Athearn Budd car bogies - at the time, I was very impressed with my work and now moreso, as Given I was 12, it scales remarkably well in the major dimensions, which was suprising.

The new 500 (516) is a brass, whitemetal and polyurethane composite kit from Strath Hobbies, riding on a heavily modified Proto 2000 S1 mechanism.

516 still has a fair way to go in order to be complete, but most of the hard yards are now complete - fitting of a decoder, lighting and fitting couplers still remain - the coupler issue still giving me some grief, as not even a #33 coupler box is small enough to fit between the pilot and the bogie...any ideas would be appreciated!

Sometimes its a nice reminder to see where we've come from as modellers, and gives a bit of perspective when critiquing our latest builds!

Pete